 Exploring the representativeness of the M5 competition dataEvangelos Theodorou, Shengjie Wang, Yanfei Kang, Evangelos Spiliotis, Spyros Makridakis and Vassilios Assimakopoulos International Journal of Forecasting, 2022, vol. 38, issue 4, 1500-1506 Abstract: The main objective of the M5 competition, which focused on forecasting the hierarchical unit sales of Walmart, was to evaluate the accuracy and uncertainty of forecasting methods in the field to identify best practices and highlight their practical implications. However, can the findings of the M5 competition be generalized and exploited by retail firms to better support their decisions and operation? This depends on the extent to which M5 data is sufficiently similar to unit sales data of retailers operating in different regions selling different product types and considering different marketing strategies. To answer this question, we analyze the characteristics of the M5 time series and compare them with those of two grocery retailers, namely Corporación Favorita and a major Greek supermarket chain, using feature spaces. Our results suggest only minor discrepancies between the examined data sets, supporting the representativeness of the M5 data. Keywords: Forecasting competitions; M5; Time series visualization; Time series features; Retail sales forecasting (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:intfor:v:38:y:2022:i:4:p:1500-1506 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2021.07.006 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Forecasting is currently edited by R. J. Hyndman More articles in International Journal of Forecasting from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.